How taxes are dealt with in North America. Just send me how much I owe. Don’t have me go through a service to figure it out
You largely have intuit/turbotax/quickbooks/mailchimp/whatever other name they use for that process. Or at least the paying for it part
Intuit is the sole reason our taxes are so obtuse. They lobby for it to be this way.
That’s absolutely not the case. They lobby to prevent the IRS making their own version of TurboTax, not lobbying to make the tax code more complex. Taxes are complex because we have little real oversight but a lot of deductions and credits. The IRS literally cannot track everything they offer deductions for, so it goes largely on the honor system until something seems fishy.
If you have a house, you have deductions. If you added solar to your house, you have deductions. If you bought an electric car or a hybrid, you had deductions for a while there. If you rent you have deductions in some states. You have to list your dependents for credits.
The IRS is incapable of tracking all of this.
But like I feel like this system of deduction taxes is more difficult than any other country and it reinforces the need for americans to use software or an accountant. Am I wrong? Are other countries putting up with this shit? The biden admin is the first in my lifetime to give us credits rather than a rebate or deductible.
That’s… Not at all true. There has been a child tax credit for decades. EV credits have existed for quite some time.
And yeah, other countries have some, but iirc they do it because they already track everything for VAT purposes, so it’s just an extension of that.
Likewise, the IRS already knows everything about me. If I qualify for, say, food stamps, just have the IRS send me the food stamps. Don’t make me jump through hoops when I’m already destitute, come on.
This would make tens of thousands of jobs redundant and make many social programs much more efficient.
But that’s only really makes sense in like the simplest of cases. The government doesn’t know if you had a kid this year, or maybe you bought an EV, or maybe you started renting out a room in your home.
If all you have is a single W2 income; then by all means go to your local library, grab a 1040-EZ form, fill it out, and drop it in the mail. Will probably only take you 10 minutes or less.
In all but the most niche cases, they do in fact know that you had a kid. That being said, most things they have a pretty good idea about (or could) and they could easily adopt the system that they do in a lot of other countries where the government sends to a tax form all filled out that says, “we think you owe this much.” Then you just provide the exemptions you listed.
This would save a considerable amount of time when I file my taxes by just being able to double check they got cost basis correct on stocks sold and applied appropriate credits for mortgage interest and what not.In all but the most niche cases, they do in fact know that you had a kid.
How would the IRS know that? The only way I could think of would be the Social Security department sharing the information with the IRS; and are they legally allowed to do that? But let’s even say that’s true; if the parents aren’t married and filing jointly, who gets to claim the child as a dependent? That’s a decision made by the parents (or local courts in case of custody battles), so not something the IRS would decide.
Basically what it seems to boil down to is that filing taxes is complicated because the tax law is complicated.
I was assuming social security could share that information since now there’s a new taxable citizen. The IRS could easily prepare tax amounts assuming married filing jointly, married filing separately, and single. You would just choose one. And like it currently is, if both people attempt to claim dependency, someone gets slapped with a fine.
Tax law is absolutely complicated, and I definitely won’t deny that, but the IRS can make things easier and could do the basic filings.
HAHAHA yah, they don’t know those things about you……sure……
You seem to have a very optimistic view of the efficiency of governments. I mean the IRS is basically running on a budget of table scraps after being defunded for decades.
It’s not “governments”, it’s the “US government”. Here in Europe, it just works.
It was more a statement about data mining. It’s cheap and easy and the government 100% does it
Maybe, and I really do mean maybe someone has a record somewhere that you have a child. That doesn’t mean it is shared with the IRS.
That’s my thinking.
Every large organization, private or public, that I’ve interacted has been basically just a bunch of different people in many different silos. I’m surprised to see so many people have this “well oiled machine” perspective of the government where apparently it is all seeing and all knowing.
So offer it for simple cases. If you don’t like the way it’s done, you can always go and do the simple process you’re describing
Sure, that would be simple enough for them to mail you a letter with like “we’re aware of these incomes from these employers” and any failure to file additional income on your part makes you liable. And of course not filing to claim any credits/deductions on your part just screws your out of your own money.
But then that also assumes the IRS knows your address. Does your employer even report your address when your taxes are withheld from your paycheck? And what if you move in the time between then?
I would be very surprised if they didn’t know the address of every taxpayer, and I do believe it’s reported by the companies you work for. If you move, you can fill out a change of address form with the postal service today, which makes the new address generally available. If they really don’t have any way of knowing currently, it would be worth every penny of my taxes to just make an online portal available where you can enter that information yourself.
Pretty sure it was sarcasm.
Tipping.
I feel like that’s a hard one. Whenever I argue against tipping with coworkers (we don’t currently work in the service industry) they will mention how they are all for it and mention how during peak times they made double their usual amount. I feel like it’s really been drilled in that it’s good for the workers
That element of it — when the restaurant is doing well, the windfall is shared with the waitstaff — could be preserved by simply giving the staff a percentage of the price of each meal they work on. Structure it as a bonus, the way salaried professionals can receive a bonus when the company is doing well.
It may be worth noting that worker-owned restaurants, like Cheese Board Pizza here in Berkeley, typically do not solicit tips. (Well, except for the live musicians, who are not worker-owners.) If tipping was really all that great for the workers, then places where the workers literally control company policy would encourage it.
Not necessarily. I don’t know about New York, but in Illinois it’s illegal for owners or management to receive tips.
It is not illegal for owners or managers to receive tips for work they perform. If the manager is waiting a table, they can receive that table’s tips.
Where the restaurant is owned by the workers, an individual worker-owner will still collect the tips for the work they perform. An owner who is not working that day has no claim to tips earned that day.
Are you sure? Even when I’ve been at places where the owner works, those owners haven’t taken tips, instead splitting any they receive among the other staff.
Employers, managers, and supervisors may not keep any portion of the employee’s tips, and may not participate in a tip pool. But yes, they can certainly accept their own tips.
Consider a small, mom-and-pop diner. Pop cooks, mom serves. They co-own the diner. They can certainly accept tips.
Hiring a part-time busboy as a worker doesn’t mean that he automatically earns all tips received during his shift. Mom still gets to collect tips for serving, pop still gets to collect tips for cooking. They don’t get to receive tips in their managerial capacity, only in their capacity as workers.
It is important to note: A traditional owner/manager only performs managerial work. This is the kind of scenario we are usually talking about when we hear about scummy managers stealing tips, but it is not the kind of scenario we are talking about here.
We are considering a restaurant that is owned by the workers. We are talking about a mom-and-pop diner with a whole lot of moms and pops doing the work.
Absolutely, those who get high tips stay in the industry. Those who get low tips are fired. Places don’t keep those who aren’t tipped well because it means they have to pay more out of the budget. If you aren’t getting high tips you are seen as lazy or not doing enough as a waiter. In reality tipping has more to do with who you get as customers (and what they find attractive) than quality of service. https://scroll.in/article/860274/does-tipping-really-ensure-better-service-probably-not
Just another way to divide. Typically FOH staff get all or most of the share, while cooks get screwed, in my experience.
Over-reliance on proprietary, closed-source products and services from megacorporations.
For instance, it’s really absurd that people in many parts of the world cannot function without WhatsApp, they can’t even imagine a life without it. It seems absurd that Meta literally has them by the balls, and these people can’t do anything about it.
Also the people who base their entire careers on say Adobe or Microsoft products, they’re literally having their lives dictated by one giant corporation, which is very depressing and dystopian.
It seems absurd that Meta literally has them by the balls, and these people can’t do anything about it.
I don’t get this sentiment. If anything happens to WhatsApp, they’ll just switch to another IM. WhatsApp wasn’t the first to come along, and won’t be the last. How exactly does Meta have them by the balls?
In some of those countries, it’s not really a choice. Like, WhatsApp is the only way of contacting a company’s customer care (via chat bots that run on it), colleges and universities may have study groups on it and teachers may hand out notes etc in those groups, also apparently it’s also the only way to contact even some government agencies.
I know, I’m from those countries. Like I said, we used other IM apps before WhatsApp came along, and if something changes we can use a new app. WhatsApp currently leads the market due to the network effect, but it doesn’t have us ‘by the balls’.
(Though the most likely successor would be WeChat, which is arguably much much worse in many ways)
it’s a shame.
So many people use it, that the barrier to change to another application is high. They would need to fuck up on very large scale.
Yes, they currently have the market share, and network effect keeps them there. Nevertheless, my point was it’s not a monopoly, so how does Meta have everybody 'by the balls"?
I remember listening to a podcast that talked of how in the Philippines (I think it was), Facebook is the internet, because Meta/FB effectively subsidised the carriers into allowing FB access to not use up any data allowance. As a result, if all you do is go on FB, you don’t pay a penny. If WhatsApp is included in this, then yeah, you’re locked in with no real alternative.
Oh right. Not quite nowadays, they get subsidised from multiple companies, including Google (YouTube) and such. I hate to say this, but WeChat would probably be happy to jump in and grab some market share if Meta does something egregiously dumb
It’s worse in China. WeChat is EVERYTHING.
At least WeChat is firmly under the state’s thumb. It’s basically a public service at this point. They should just nationalize it.
Talk to some older folks about what it was like when there was only one phone company and the alternative was snail mail.
This is an issue with the bourgeois character of American society and government. Monopolies are not a problem if workers control them.
The American Healthcare system
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My wife spent no less than 5 hours on the phone with just as many groups of people to organize a blood draw that took a grand total of three actual minutes.
That’s just the efficiency of the free market.
Ads being everywhere.
I have so many measures in place to block them whenever I do see them it always catches me off guard. The volume of them is ridiculous
Trump
Normalised by America, maybe.
Outside of it, we’re all wondering what the fuck is going on.
A lot of us inside the US are wondering the same thing still
And still wondering if he might actually come back.
What do you think the odds are?
After his arrest, probably 50/50.
I say this as a liberal with conservative family. They’ll vote for him again.
Despite the Capitol’s riot, a survey showed 1/3 of Americans thought Biden’s presidency was illegitimate. The conservatives see the lawsuits as political prosecutions.
I’d say unless the non-trump voters come out to vote in a historical number like the last election, he stands a good chance of becoming a president again. And a number of states have passed laws that would make it harder for some subsets of voters to vote.
Religions.
This is one of the most obvious answers.
Work to live.
Edit: we have built a world where we measure success by money. This has meant we are all in pursuit of it all the time, even if we don’t want to be. The rich get richer by driving us to do more with less, which marginalizes those who cannot be a productive part of that. We supress our compassion because it isn’t making money. People suffer. Those of us who can contribute subject ourselves to a different kind of stress so we can enjoy a few hours of leisure here and there but we never really are free of the shackles of our employer. If you advance to a management position you are forced to evaluate and possibly fire people you could be friends with. When hiring you are evaluating how well people bend the knee. It’s not a great world we’ve made for ourselves.
For me it’s that for a culture that fetishizes “freedom” we sure are fucking willing to accept a reality where we have to give it up for most of our waking life just to be able to live and provide for our families. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
How is that an absurdity? Humans have needed to work ever since we evolved from other species.
Yeah, it would be more correct to say “work for others to live” is absurd.
People always had to do some work to survive, but in a world were all the land is owned, if you are one of the majority which is born landless you generaly can’t work for yourself (even to open your own business you need starting money) just enough to live by with (say, build your own house and do subsistence farming), so unless mommy and daddy have lots of dosh you’re going to have to work for others within the constraints of the existing system (or become a criminal, in which case the system will punish you) and unlike when just working to provide to yourself, working in this system means competing with everybody else - and were, again, how much support mommy and daddy can give you makes a massive difference - to such a level that you have to run just to stand still.
Compared to plain old subsistence farming the whole way work is done in the current system is absurd, mainly because it has to produce way more than what is actually needed to provide for all, since a tiny slice of the population are massive money hoarders leeching out of the rest so tons of extra wealth has to be created just for them.
Whatever the optimal system is for “the greatest good for the greatest number” (which would be more than just everybody doing subsistence farming), mathematically it’s clear it can’t be one were some people have control over billions of times more resources than others.
Cars. Fuck cars.
So tired of being here in the states where people think you need a car, like it’s required to live. It’s only needed because we allow our infrastructure to be so lacking that we depend on cars. There are places both built up and as rural as the states where they don’t need cars, where driving for 3 hours for a road trip is considered ludicrous.
I use a car about 4 times a month. On those 4 occasions I need that car. When buying my house I considered some extra criteria like proximity to a bus stop, train station and a good cycleable connection to daily goods stores. Even 10 years ago that caused my house being 15 to 30% more expansive as houses in different areas.
I am lucky to be able to afford such a thing but now I don’t own a car for about 4 years and the cost of owning and maintaining a car seems to be far more expensive than the extra I had to invest in my house. Cars have become a lot more expensive while inflation made it easier to do the downpayments on my house.
Circumcision
Yup, absolutely. Although as far as I know, it’s only still a thing for Americans and Jews, and maybe one other country I can’t remember rn? And I think it’s on a downturn in the US thank god
Islam and the Philippines, in the Philippines being called “intact” is a bad insult.
The current work week, there is no need for it to be that long with the advances in technology. Capitalism, its a pyramid scheme that is unsustainable.
I am noticeably more efficient on 4 day weeks, it just doesn’t feel like a grind as much as the 5 day week. 5 day weeks I’ll get bored, stare at the clock, and just want to be over. 4 day weeks I actually feel rejuvenated after the weekend and I’m ready to come back. We really need to rethink that
People have lost sight of how much of our “free” time is actually just resting and recuperating in order to perform better during “work” time. Like, the 8 hours a day I sleep isn’t really my time. The commute to and from work isn’t my time. The basic maintenance and upkeep stuff, the unwinding from a stressful day, all that isn’t truly my time, it’s just preparing for and recovering from work time.
A two-day weekend makes this exceptionally clear. At least one of the days is usually spent catching up on all the stuff you couldn’t do because you were working. The second day is rushing to try and get any enjoyment out of it before you go back to work. There’s barely any actual agency or freedom, it’s all part of the cycle of producing value for someone else.
Even worse if you’re in a job without set schedules or weekends, like most service industry workers.
Hahaha i read the 102 current comments and basically 90% of those that name the absurdity is just “capitalism” or its consequences.
Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t think about the root causes of these problems. So there’s a lot of focus on the symptoms without thinking about the underlying dynamics of capitalism that cause these issues.
Destroying our only habitable planet.
our strange treatment of animals
we anthropomorphise and infantilise our pets, yet boast about the animals we eat who’ve had legit insanity level cruel lives thanks to our systems.
[ not saying fussing over your pets is bad, i love it too, just the contrast is whiplash++ ]
lack of body autonomy
hint: most lqbqtia rights, reproductive rights, medical/medication rights, are all the SAME RIGHT:
your body, your choice.
it is constantly under attack, and diffused into separate arguments when its the one right effecting all these issues. newsflash: when it comes to my body, your unwelcome opinion, religious or otherwise, ain’t worth the air its vibrating through.
slippery slope gatekeeping laws
making harmless x illegal because a subset of x might lead to harmful y. if y is bad, then enforce your ban on y, and fuckoff trying to use it as an excuse to control x₀, x₁, x₂ etc.
“Your body, your choice” has a limit once a super dangerous pathogen shows up and people start refusing the best tool we have to stop it for increasingly batshit reasons.
If you choose not to vaccinate, you’re directly putting everyone else you interact with at risk. So there’s a limit
Eh, “your body, your choice” still holds. The rest of us just also get to use our bodily autonomy to say “fine, but stay away from society”. Go live in the wilderness and avoid the 5Gs or whatever as you die of a stubbed toe because of your choices.
when anything is that important, the medicine must be opensourced 1.
if so, and it’s handled correctly, you can still have body autonomy in those situations due to the resulting freedoms - much akin in nature to the software foss freedoms we all cherish. and in that sense, would not be a limit of “Your body, your choice". while still maintaining, if not increasing, the public protection to such threats.
it was really refreshing to see some discussion in public health policy from some very smart and relevant people for opensourcing those medications. unsurprisingly it was swiftly shot down, but it was nice to at least see it taking place - which is a small positive change.
1 naturally we decouple authentication and traceability from commercial interests. and ofc it does not mean noone gets paid
Western society handing money, tax breaks etc hand over fist to rich people while our quality of life slowly erodes over time.
